Twelve ships

The tide turned at the hour of the rat, and the admiral was awake to hear it.

He had not slept well since the summer. Since the court had stripped him of his rank and arrested him and taken him to the capital for interrogation, since the torture, since his mother had died on the road coming to see him and he had not been allowed to mourn her. Since the man who replaced him had taken the fleet of Joseon to Chilcheollyang and lost almost all of it in a single night.

Now the court wanted him back. And there was almost nothing left to command.

The letter

A month earlier, a message had come from the king: the navy was too weak to matter. The admiral should bring his men ashore and fight on land with the army.

He had written his reply by lamplight, the brush steady even though his hand was not. He had kept it short. A court that has lost its fleet does not want an essay.

Your servant still has twelve warships.

He had not said the rest of what he believed: that if the sea fell, the enemy would sail up the west coast, supply its armies by water, and the peninsula would be lost. He had not said that twelve ships were not a navy. He had said only what was true, and let the number stand.

The strait

Since then, one more ship had been found, and so there were thirteen. Out on the dark water, the Uldolmok channel was roaring. He had walked its shores for days, watching it. It was narrow, so narrow that a large fleet could not spread out. And twice a day the current reversed and ran through the gap like a river in flood, fast enough to spin a ship that was not ready for it.

A hundred and more Japanese ships were coming. They would come through the strait because it was the shortest way. They would come with the current behind them, and they would expect thirteen ships to run.

He wrote in his diary that night, as he did every night. He wrote about the weather and about the men. His officers were afraid. Some had looked at the size of the enemy fleet and quietly made plans to be elsewhere. He did not blame them. He had been afraid too, many times. But he had learned that fear was a kind of weather. It passed through a man. It did not have to steer him.

Morning

Before dawn he called the captains together. He did not tell them they would win. He told them where to stand, and what the tide would do, and when.

Those who are resolved to die shall live; those who seek to live shall die.

Then he went aboard his own ship and took it to the front of the line, alone if he had to, so that every man behind him could see where the admiral was.

Out in the channel, the water began, very slowly, to turn.

Author's note: this is a retelling. The letter and the address are documented; the admiral's thoughts are imagined. Numbers for the Japanese fleet vary by source; Yi's own diary records more than a hundred and thirty ships.